Wordless
by RowanDarkstar
Summary: Her injuries are rare. There is something primal and scorching in her cringes and quiet cries. Something I can't easily weather.' - Angst, hurt/comfort, Xena/Gabrielle friendship


**Author's Notes**: I'm not sure how this story happened. :D I'm deeply involved in writing another Xena fic right now that's a completely different style and tone (more true to my usual style), but this fic just appeared and insisted upon happening. And in first person. I never write in first person for an entire fic. Oh, well. :D I blame my (psychotic) muse, Lillith.

**Disclaimer**: This all belongs to Renaissance Pictures. I wish I could say it was all mine. Truly I do. But I'm just borrowing this wonderful world with all due respect.

**Spoilers**: Vague spoilers from the "Past Imperfect" flashbacks.

Much thanks to Teddy E for the beta.:)

This one is for all the folks in the OT forum on the 'In Sickness and In Hell' thread at the XOC

Copyright (c) 2008

**Wordless**

by

LadyRowanD

I am a bard. A storyteller. A peacemaker. A hopeful healer.

I travel with a warrior. A woman who has searched and struggled and tried and failed and found her path with a sword in her hand and a deadly blade at her hip. She's a damned good warrior, I should note, perhaps the best as they come. She nearly always emerges on top. So most of the suffering I witness comes to those who have wronged others. To those some might consider deserving of punishment. Or to those Xena (and I) are working to help or to free.

Most of the time I can bear what I must see. But I discovered very early in our travels that it is unexpectedly difficult for me to watch Xena in pain.

This shouldn't be surprising. She's my friend. My family. It's only natural to hurt for her. But I have had a family I love, a sister I adore, parents I wouldn't trade for the world. And their suffering pains me deeply. But with Xena... It's not the same. Her injuries are rare. There is something primal and scorching in her cringes and quiet cries. Something I can't easily weather.

Xena the Warrior Princess suffers from horrible headaches. She has for a long time. Most of her adult life, I would imagine. But you would never know. It's not the kind of thing a warrior advertises. Pain is weakness. Vulnerability. Too many vultures wait to descend. Xena has become so practiced at deception, even I was unaware of her suffering until we traveled together nearly a year. Now that I've seen how bad the pain gets, I can't imagine how she hid the attacks from me for so long.

The headaches don't come often, but when they do, she seems to hold her breath for two or three days, living from dose to dose of the medicinal herb concoction she has developed specifically for this use.

Xena hardly sleeps during the cycle. She gets dizzy riding, much less fighting, and she can hardly keep food down. I have seen her wipe out ten slavers, smile reassuringly and tend to their freed captives' wounds, send the frightened girls on their way -- then crawl off into the bushes to throw-up. She huddles against a tree until the shivering stops or her legs will hold her weight.

She lets me help her, now. Water, blankets, medicines, gentle broths. She murmurs quiet thanks and doesn't quite hold eye contact. She is ashamed of her body's betrayal. This I understand. She thrives on mental and physical discipline. I ceased long ago trying to tell her she's only human.

She told me about the shoulder and neck rubs the third year we were together. I nearly bloodied her nose for not telling me sooner.

A former servant girl of hers…Satrina, I think she said…discovered that if she rubbed her mistress's neck just the right way for just the right time at the first hints of an impending attack, she could lessen the length and intensity of the pain.

Xena confided in me one fire lit and intimate midnight, that she had depended on this girl's skills for her survival while she'd been pregnant with Solan. The herbs she normally used hadn't been safe for the baby.

In our third year together, Xena slowly and (reasonably) patiently taught me what muscles to massage and how.

The first time my touches stopped the pain, the relief made her cry. I took that in in wonder, not sure from where her poorly hidden tears arose, or what comfort I could offer. She rolled away from me...it was late, the campfire burning low. I spread the blanket over her bare shoulders and stroked her hair until she slept. She let me.

I have realized with time that Xena kept the headaches secret for more reasons than I had guessed. The pain is a physical weakness, the nausea, the blurred vision -- these are liabilities or death warrants to a warrior living by the blade.

But the headaches do more. They chip away at Xena's carefully constructed barriers, soften time-worn palace walls. They make Xena...vulnerable. They strip her raw.

The third time she let me rub her shoulders to soften the pain, she also let me see her cry. She slid down against me where I sat with my back to a tree, rested her head in the crook of my elbow, leather and warm skin and dark hair along my midriff. She turned her face away, but there was no pretense of deception this time.

"Xena..." I lost my breath. The wordless bard. The Warrior Princess lay in my arms with tears in her eyes.

"Why are you here?" she said, so softly I barely caught the words through the wind above us.

"What do you mean?" My fingers moved restlessly along her arm, caught on the familiar trace of a scar from a nameless battle.

"With me," she breathed, dampness thick in her words. My stomach muscles quivered and I wondered if she could feel me tremble.

"You're sick," I said simply, aware it was an evasion. Or not.

"In my life." There was no trace of impatience. Just a low-resonating hoarseness.

I drew a deep breath, pulled up to my height and her need. "Because you're my friend, Xena. You're where I belong." She was silent, and I let the words slip without thought, "I love you."

I felt her nails in the skin of my forearm. "Gabrielle. You think you've... You don't know what I really am. Who I've been. I messed up this life." The darkness and bitterness were clear, and the familiar acid burned through my gut. I live braced for one more twist, one last cruelty I cannot fathom or forgive. Xena's past...and what bits of it remain in her present...frighten me deeply. I couldn't lie to either of us over that. But her hair smells like home and I can't imagine drawing away from her outstretched hand.

"No." She craved this simple truth. "I probably don't. But I know something more important."

She stirred, fell quiet, then, "What?"

"I know who you want to be."

I swear I felt the wave of pain wash through her and onto my skin. She breathed unevenly for several moments and I scratched lightly at the red trace on her arm where her brace had been clasped. I am still disbelieving that I have earned the right to do such things.

"What if I fail?" she whispered.

I let my hand fall still and clasped her elbow. "Didn't your mother ever tell you, you only fail if you don't try?"

At this, Xena mustered the spirit to turn her head and look up at me. I could see the tear tracks on her cheeks and the familiar, tell-tale ache burned through my limbs, but I also saw the look of snarky disdain at my platitude.

I let go a nervous laugh and felt the heat beneath my cheekbones as she once again turned away. "Okay, okay, a bit of a cliche for a Bard, I admit. But that doesn't make it any less true."

My only reply was a soft exhale through her nose.

We lay silent. I smoothed a slow hand over her brow, gathering back her wind-tossed hair, wondering where in the world her mind had swept her, and if it was anywhere I could ever follow. "Does it still hurt?" I asked softly.

Her answer was faint and eerily distant. "Yeah. It still hurts."

I was the one to feel sick. We weren't talking about her headache.

The sun stretched long tree-shadows across Xena's legs.

We spoke in quiet and far-spaced observations. About the grass, or a bird, or practical exchanges over the loose buckle on my battle-worn boot. Then it was something mildly funny, to break the spell. And in the end it was just us -- Xena and me -- relaxing and joking near the small pond, and nothing else of importance was said.

Xena suffers from terrible headaches, endures unfathomable pain.

She doesn't hide from me all the time.

I wonder if my hands are strong enough.

#


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